Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer is a rare and wonderful enterprise in this age of Scary Movie et al.: a spoof that doesn't concern itself with yesterday's box-office hits, but rather a sub-sub-genre of camp-set comedies from the late '70s to mid-'80s that includes Meatballs, the TV movie Poison Ivy (with Michael J. Fox and Nancy McKeon), SpaceCamp, and the non-gory scenes of Friday The 13th and Sleepaway Camp. The nostalgia-based satire doesn't stop there: The 2001 film from members of comedy troupe The State is pitched specifically to Reagan-era latchkey kids who grew up watching those movies on television, and have a certain generalized love for the fashions, hairstyles, music, and other minutiae that seeped into their wood-paneled family rooms. Though the absurdist touches should score with a broader audience, these references will likely make sense only to the Gen-X couch potatoes who have given the film its cult following. 

Updated 08/12/2010